CONTACT US

6.1 University Committee Structure

Approved by Academic Council on April 25, 2002, Administration on April 24, 2002

The primary way in which the expertise of the members of the University community can be utilized for decision making and in which the perspectives of the diverse constituencies within the University are incorporated into decision making is through the committee system.

Committees are classified as "faculty", "administrative" or "joint constituency" depending on whether they are responsible to the faculty through the Academic Council, to an administrative officer or to multiple constituencies.

The body or administrator to whom the committee is responsible shall have the power to charge a committee to accomplish a certain task and to receive reports from that committee.

In the case of joint constituency committees, the bodies and the administrative officers to whom the committee reports should establish a common charge to the committee.

All represented constituencies will receive the report of the committee.

Membership on committees should be governed by the following principles:

Committee membership should represent those constituencies most involved with the function governed by the committee;

Committee members shall be selected as described under Committee Descriptions by the constituency they represent;

Committees should have as few members as possible. If a member is both elected to a committee and serves by virtue of his/her office, he/she shall have only one vote;

Each committee elects its own chair unless otherwise stated under Committee Descriptions, and is encouraged to also select both a chair and a chair-elect; the election should take place at the last meeting of the current academic year. Faculty committees should be chaired by faculty members.

Table 6.1 lists the committees and shows the general structure of each, including committee type, representation, election process, body who formulates charge and to whom report is made, etc.

In addition to the committees listed in Table 6.1, the faculty of each unit (School, College, or Library) should elect its own governance body; examples are the COP Council and the Engineering Council. These unit governance bodies are charged with establishing and approving unit policies, electing all faculty representatives from that unit, working jointly with the Dean of the unit to improve the unit and maintaining liaison with the all-University governance structure.

For each committee description, the letters in parentheses following each committee name indicate whether it is a faculty (F), administration (A) or joint (J) committee and whether the membership is drawn from throughout the University (U) or from only the Stockton campus. (S)